The G20 Criminal Investigative Project, formed in the wake of mayhem that broke out on Toronto’s streets at the G20 summit, is being recognized Thursday for their legwork.

Det. Sgt. Gary Giroux (right) speaks to the media at a news conference in Toronto in July, 2010, at which Toronto police displayed photos of a "most wanted" list of people they allege took part in violence and vandalism during the G20 protests. Giroux was in charge of a task force, members of which are to receive an award Thursday for their work.

On a notorious weekend in 2010, with G20 leaders convening in our midst, this city became a mini police state, unrecognizable to people who lived here.

Cops could not control the streets — or themselves in some instances.

Two senior officers — a superintendent and an inspector — were subsequently charged under the police act for their alleged mismanagement in deploying troops that “kettled” peaceful protesters in the rain and rousted people from a university gym, making insupportable arrests willy-nilly.

A constable was charged by the special investigation unit with assault in the violent takedown at Queen’s Park of demonstrator Adam Nobody, but only after media provided videotape evidence of the baton-whipping episode.

The chief of police was excoriated for haplessness.

Upwards of a hundred cops removed their ID badges before all hell broke loose on the Legislature lawn.

A scathing report by Ontario’s ombudsman railed against “the most massive compromise of civil liberties in Canadian history.”

Chief Bill Blair’s own internal audit conceded police were “overwhelmed’’ and underprepared to respond to the “dynamic situations” posed by the G20 event, a gathering of world leaders that routinely provokes civil unrest, mass public demonstrations and violence.

The province’s independent police watchdog chimed in with an exhaustive systematic review of the G20 horrors that lambasted police for unlawful arrests, Charter rights infringements and “gross violation” of prisoner rights, as the rank and file “blindly followed orders” from senior commanders who viewed protesters as “terrorists.”

More than 1,000 people charged, most of those later withdrawn or tossed.

And now Toronto police are giving themselves an award for it.

They are tone deaf.

That is not to say the task force specifically being recognized Thursday for their legwork is without merit. The G20 Criminal Investigative Project was formed in the wake of mayhem that broke out on Toronto’s streets on the Friday night when marauders in bandanas and balaclavas unleashed a clearly orchestrated fury against public and private property, overturning and torching squad cars, smashing store windows and terrifying the citizenry.

But police patting themselves on the shoulder over such a fiasco is wrong, all wrong. The optics are horrible.

It’s an internal Toronto Police Service award, which makes the self-serving praise even worse.

Three years later, the cop shop still doesn’t get it.

There is little to feel proud about in the aftermath of that weekend of wreckage and trampled rights. Goodness, a slew of lawsuits against police for alleged abuse of force are still winding their way through the courts. And much of this city lost faith in its upholders of law and order, unprepared as they were to avert the chaos that erupted, then overly zealous in response to top-down orders that they “take back the streets.”

We’ve not forgotten any of it. Apparently, however, some folks up on College St. have done precisely that, further demonstrating the isolation and poor PR grasp of our police department, which has yet to make fulsome answer for mistakes committed, including the misapplication of archaic wartime legislation that had cops conducting illegal searches on the periphery of the secure G20 quadrant.

The team award, originating with Professional Standards, is being presented to some of the 82 members of the Toronto Police Service who are being honoured on Thursday along with a handful of officers from other law agencies and 15 civilians.

The task force was thrown together hastily under the command of senior homicide Det.-Sgt. Gary Giroux.

“My team was tasked with a very specific focus,” Giroux told the Star Wednesday. “We felt, I felt, that they did a really good job at that. It’s a teamwork award based on how we worked together to hold those individuals to account when they massed up.”

A narrative of the group’s investigations was submitted to an awards committee by a senior officer and was then put to a vote among people who hold various positions in the organization. The presentation will take part in the lobby at headquarters.

“The teamwork award that my investigative team is getting is based on the assignment we got following the destruction of the city on the 26th of June,’’ Giroux explains. “An investigative team was formed on the Monday which I headed. We were tasked with identifying, apprehending and prosecuting as many offenders in relation to that particular day.”

They worked offside for about a year. All of their arrests cascaded from the events of June 26.

Forty-eight individuals were arrested on 252 Criminal Code charges. Of those, 34 either pled out or were found guilty in the Ontario Court of Justice and Superior Court of Justice. Charges ranged from mischief over $5,000 (for damage to property), assault, assault with a weapon, assault causing bodily harm, arson (for the cars set on fire) wearing a disguise, break and enter (perpetrators who stole items from looted stores), theft and possession of stolen property.

Seven cases are still outstanding — five Americans for whom extradition papers had to be filed (four since returned to Canada; one being held in custody in Arizona) and two Canadians still awaiting trial.

It’s evident the task force did their jobs well. There was no public tolerance for the anarchists and pile-on looters who ambushed downtown Toronto during the G20. But the public was also shocked by how quickly it all got out of hand, the ineffective police response to violence and, most assuredly, the overkill that ensued.

Pulling out the thread of this one investigative success from the broader tapestry of police incompetence and continuing non-accountability is a ragged shred of preening that would have been better left unravelled.

Nobody has given Mr. Nobody a medal.

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

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